


Beneath The Same Sun

by midnightroad



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Black Eagles route, Fluff, M/M, but theres a lake and a caledonian gar involved, is it platonic or romantic who knows, just two guys being dudes what's better than this, tw ferdinand von aegir mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22390288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightroad/pseuds/midnightroad
Summary: Indiscriminate touches and knowing glances are simply a part of their friendship – from the start, it was nothing out of the ordinary.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	Beneath The Same Sun

There’s a bead of sweat on Caspar’s brow. 

It bounces with the swing of his shoulders, precariously clung to thin hairs, ever conscious of a disastrous fate in the case of a misstep. Caught in a convoluted net of his own words as they dive from his tongue in fast-paced troves, Caspar doesn’t notice it. Sweat was inconsequential – to him, at least. His hands, clenched into loose fists, cut through the air in narrow swings; short blue locks sway when his head tilts to the side, but that particular bead of sweat persists. 

“I got ‘im right in the knees! He was shoutin’ something awful, cursing me to places I probably shouldn’t repeat on holy ground and—”

Linhardt stares but only in timed intervals.

His eyelids are half-closed, mouth pulled into a loose line that goes neither up nor down, boring into the swells of pink cheeks struck by the early afternoon heat. It’s the third time he’s heard this anecdote in the past week and, as Caspar’s voice drills further into his ears, words become fanciful sounds in a world of simplicity. When he counts ten clicks of his boot’s heel against brick pavement, he looks elsewhere; ten more and he’s slowed his blinking, observing how Caspar raises his left hand to swipe under his nose – hiding the distasteful curl of his lips. Linhardt harks back to the very same gesture from the first two retellings.

“See, I was gonna be chivalrous and let ‘im off with a warning, even after all those insults, but then he had the nerve t’call me a—”

“Pipsqueak,” Linhardt punctuates, quiet but curt in such a way that Caspar’s tongue is bitten still, “I remember.”

Nostrils flared in a moment of ostentatious clarity, Caspar’s chin wrinkles when his lower lip juts out – had Linhardt felt anything more than torpid weariness, such an expression would amuse him. Caspar crosses his arms, and uncrosses them almost immediately when his undershirt sticks more than it flows.

“How many times have I told this story before?” He asks with clueless sincerity. 

“This is the third.”

“Huh.”

The obstinate bead of sweat draws a transparent, glimmering path from temple to rounded cheek, desperate for the last seconds of its life when it hangs from the slope of Caspar’s jaw. As it meets its end with a silent splatter onto dark cotton twill fabric, another takes its place. 

Summer was no sooner around the corner than the fleeing winter, and yet the sun beats down on those beneath it with a golden smile and an iron fist. It was an atypical day of repose, so generously granted by the professors after a number of students pestered them during the week’s lectures. Barely a few days after their first real battle at the Red Canyon and the Black Eagles had become listless, save a nameless few – so much so that Byleth took it upon themselves to offer words of consolation at the start of every class. 

Linhardt found solace in the brisk confines of the library since the early morning – before the birds sang their first melody, before the moon was aware of its impending fate beyond the horizon – searching dust-laden shelves for a number of books and archives. (Night was filled with the scratch of quill against parchment and flickering candlelight, the circles beneath his eyes digging further into his skull with every passing hour.) Barely past noon, he gave into the saccharine embrace of slumber, leaning too far into the arm braced against his table at the elbow; it was a shame Caspar found him at such depths, jostling his shoulders so violently Linhardt heard the faint rattle of his bones. 

“Come on,” he nearly shouted in the corner of the library farthest from the main entrance, conviction tied between his words as Linhardt’s clumsy hands shuffled books into a haphazard pile, “Let’s go to the lake down the mountainside and refresh our minds!” 

Linhardt blinked in response and Caspar took it as an act of concession rather than exhaustion. Barely giving Linhardt the time to fully wake up, let alone tuck two books under his wing, Caspar dove into his waist and toted him out of the library on his shoulder like an empty potato sack. 

Uniform peeling from his skin thread-by-thread and knees smarting something awful some hours later, Linhardt’s inescapable nonchalance becomes his downfall. 

A breeze dares to whisper its most dire secrets to a congregation of centenarian trees where the lain brick ends and paved dirt begins, hopeful to caress the burning sun when a generous atmosphere permits it; Caspar arrives at its tail first and it flees, fluttering the loose ends of Linhardt’s hair as he lumbers behind. The two exchange looks – electric blue with a bit of mischief rung around its irises and cobalt silver drowning in selfish desires – and, in the midst of Linhardt’s muttered complaints, disappear into the nearby bushes. From their evergreen haven in the trees above, golden rays peer unto the earth, twined among dwindling leaves and branches that reach for the heavens.

With the Harpstring Moon comes an inundation of serenity: a tree crumpled with age stands before a lake askew from the beaten path, blanketed by a thousand scarlet willows dancing alongside the shorthand wind. 

Young blades of grass, colored a transient marigold as those rays shine down through sparse canopies, stand tall or lie small at its base; some are plucked from the soil and twisted into a bracelet of dulled thorns (although the handiwork of a distant stranger, Caspar questions aloud if Bernadetta could have done so; Linhardt mentions Ferdinand instead, but Caspar is incapable of detecting sarcasm in deadpan tones), others crushed under the weight of coptic-bound books and leather boots. Though the nature that surrounds the lake could hardly be deemed a forest, a mere collection of bushels and trees inhabiting an otherwise barren clearing on the mountainside of Garreg Mach, it was comfortable – heartening. 

The lake’s waters a mirror to the skies above, the vague image of ivory clouds led astray wade downstream. Fed by a stony waterfall, it flows to a tender harmony assuaged by the warmth of untainted flesh.

“Caspar,” Linhardt yawns, the sound of his voice nearly lost to the expansion of his lungs, “Would you do me a favor?” 

Caspar, bent at the waist and loosening one of his boots at the heel, squints when he raises his head. “What is it? If you’re gonna ask me t’take your–”

“To take my boots off for me? Oh, you know me so well.” Though flowers bloom on his lips, to find a minuscule change in Linhardt’s expression would require a looking glass and inhuman patience. He lifts his right foot but only just. “If it wouldn’t be a bother.”

“Alright, alright.” Kicking his own boots to the side, Caspar momentarily holds his hands up (sarcastic pleading, because Linhardt had always been too lazy to insist) and crouches to appease his friend’s request. “I’m definitely not doing this for you next time, though!”

Linhardt, eyes closed and head lolling to the side, hums because there’s always a next time. “Of course, my dear friend.”

From the dark soil beneath the olden tree to the tawny strip of sand decorated with broken rocks and twigs alike on the lake’s shore are separate trails of bare footprints: one whose strides are longer and slower, herded toward an unorthodox patch of dying grass just before the sand, and the other taking no care to stomp where it so pleases. 

Linhardt takes no care in loosening the satin ribbon tying his hair, layered strands of a green darker than the very wilderness surrounding them waving across pale, sinewy shoulders. His muttered words of repose (“If only it were possible to sleep and bathe at the same time…”) fall on deaf ears as a blue-haired bullet races into the lake’s deepest edges from the top of a distant boulder, hollering about how Linhardt would sooner drown in his own daydreams than the water itself. Caspar, however loud he dares to be, doesn’t make so much as a splash over the roaring waterfall as he barrels into the lake.

Standing far behind the waterline, Linhardt knots his hair ribbon around his wrist, half-mast stare lowering to the weighted impressions of smaller feet in the sand. It pulled his hair the first time Caspar attempted to loop the ribbon into a tidy bow, boorish fingers unsure of where to lead one ivory tail when he’d lost the other; Linhardt taught him how to tie a knot while the ribbon was lain across his wrist that evening, long ago, but only when too many strands of his hair were yanked out of his scalp and coarsely brushed into the grass. His eyes rise again in slothful seconds, organizing a route from his position on the lowest slope of the clearing before the lake’s shore to a pleasant depth in the water. 

Though his toes barely skim the water, it’s enough to dry the sweat at the nape of his neck and chill his bones. 

Caspar surfaces far away: a distance so out of reach that Linhardt almost doesn’t calculate it, wondering if he could ever reach him again. The frigid temperature of the water is an unnecessary evil that coils around such unconscious thoughts, encroaching on his skin – from bony and exposed ankles to an undefined stomach covered by his uniform’s linen undershirt. His muscles are forced to tense. Tight. Uncomfortable. It was the most effort Linhardt’s body had put forth since the Black Eagle house’s clash with bandits in Zanado – even then, he stood behind the offensive wall of several housemates and inwardly complained about his need to participate for almost half an hour. 

Bemused, an unfettered brightness in his countenance that travels from his ear-splitting grin to his fingers, Caspar waves from the western depths. “Hey, Linhardt!” His voice weaves through the dwindling canopies, echoing in far more than just Linhardt’s ears, and it truly does seem like there’s a thousand miles between them. “It’s a lot warmer over here!” Caspar cups his hands around his mouth, as if he wasn’t loud enough. “You’re shaking like a cat in the rain!” 

Out comes a sigh from the depths of Linhardt’s throat, but it doesn’t harken to exasperation nor annoyance. Rather, his expression has hardly changed, brows balanced straight above doe eyes – not a wrinkle in sight. “I am already exhausted, thank you.” And it shows, his voice more breath than noise.

Caspar contorts his features into an angled pout, chin held high as his lower lip burrows under its upper twin, button nose – flushed a sensible pink – scrunched ever so slightly. His brows, expressive but angular, plunge into the space between his eyes before writhing upwards once more. Strength gathers at his thighs to kick downward and keep him afloat at this depth, where his feet no longer scrape against the lakebed. He watches as Linhardt slithers further into the lake, impish smile returning before he takes a deep breath and vanishes under the water’s surface once more. 

“There he goes again,” Linhardt sighs, “Always disappearing.”

Around them, the clearing continues on. 

Birds start a tranquil harmony to the birth of a spring evening with the beating of their wings and timed chirps. Gentle winds move between the fine strings of the Goddess’ grandiose harp and the trees on a peaceful earth – rustling leaves, branches, and damp hair alike. It’s a natural quietude Linhardt rests under, in spite of the gratuitous effort required of his existence to persist in such a space. 

Rings of scattering fish garner his attention. Fascinated by an ecosystem functioning in a world outside of his own, he follows one such ring until his shoulders lie beneath the surface, though the very tips of his toes still reach the tender foundation of the lake; his arms, long and frail, work in lackadaisical beats to keep him afloat. Fine tresses float behind Linhardt like crumpled seaweed, most lain straight by the weight of saturated water as others curl into themselves, nostalgic of their time tied behind his shoulders. What’s visible of his face – all charcoal blue eyes and a sharp nose – peers above the waterline, lips pressed into a thinner line to stop his tongue from tasting salt and blowing bubbles. 

Caspar’s presence equates to underwater waves skimming down pale calves and the occasional crash of his feet against the surface. Linhardt tracks his movements – here, there – before the water calms into a hushed doldrum. Only the waterfall’s drum beats. Turning his head, he looks at the willow tree just beyond the shoreline, its flexible branches dancing alongside a late afternoon breeze.

Had it been anyone else, Linhardt would have swam to shore. Had it been anyone else, attempts to garner his attention would have been futile in the first place; he would still be in the library, drooling on his sleeve. Had it been anyone else— A tuft of turquoise bursts from the water less than a meter away, and a pair of narrow shoulders (petite but not weak, lean muscle trailing down to his arms) follow suit; Linhardt momentarily squeezes his eyes closed as lakewater rains down on him, some quiet droplets falling back to their home overshadowed by the fanning splashes of a fishtail against the surface. 

“Check it out,” Caspar says as he swims toward him with one arm, carrying his weight with such ease that Linhardt finds himself staring, “I caught this Caledonian Gar.” And Linhardt takes back, then pushes forward his interest when Caspar raises his other arm further, bicep twitching with the sharp movements of a Gar the size of his forearm clutched tight in his fingers. “Pretty cool, huh?”

As though it was a chore to speak, Linhardt rests his chin where air and water meet, blinking for a moment too long and allowing his voice to betray the gleam in his eyes. “If I knew there were Caledonian Gars in this lake, I would have brought a fishing pole from the monastery’s pond.” 

His wiry hand runs a finger down the gar’s maxilla, lifting minuscule scales backwards in a swift, gentle motion; Caspar tightens his grip, if only to save his own nose from the thrash of the fish’s tail. Linhardt always had an interest in the sea and what lies within – it’s part of the unknown, he fathomed after weeks of tossing back Airmid Gobies and White Trouts the autumn he turned thirteen – and Caspar knows better than anyone else. He was the victim of countless lectures on Linhardt’s hypotheses regarding the obscure functions of a fish’s organic life and what could lie at the very bottom of the sea’s floor, unbeknownst to humans, after all. 

“Next time,” Caspar chimes when he remembers how to pull syllables into cohesive words, enthusiastic as ever, “You can fish all day long and I can swim to train my body!” 

Linhardt makes a noise of pleasant neutrality, tilting his head to observe the rest of the Gar. “That sounds nice.”

Gaze centered on Linhardt’s hand, fair skin stretched taut over spindly, elegant fingers and prominent knuckles, Caspar looks to his face – devoid of a readable emotion except for the faint gleam in his eyes, ever close and so very far away. 

Such a lack of emotion was concerning to Caspar once upon a time, when they were children unconcerned with the world outside of their fantastical (or lethargic) fantasies. He would carve smiles into tree trunks and firewood and Linhardt would show far less enthusiasm than those serrated edges. The Bergliez boy had even asked his father if there was something wrong with his green-haired friend, only to be met with a gruff, “The entire house of Hevring is bewildering.” It was entirely on accident that Caspar had come to notice hints of excitement, of interest, of frustration, of melancholy in the tiny creases of Linhardt’s eyes and brows: he brought back a book Linhardt thought lost to nature’s divine hands and, though it was dusted with dirt, its pages wrinkled by a light rainfall, Linhardt’s eyes shone brighter than the gleaming moonlight. 

From then on, Caspar swore to venture into the indigo seas within Linhardt’s irises whenever they were close – if only to ensure he was understood by someone, no matter his obstinance.

“I’ll hold you to it, y’know. When it comes to things like this, you’re all bark and no bite.” He tosses a line out but never too far. Unlike his companion, the unknown is so far beyond his territory that mere exploration is out of the question.

Linhardt frowns when the Gar snaps its jaws closed, narrowly missing his index finger as he withdraws his hand. “It takes too much effort to bite, Caspar. I would rather waste my breath than my body.” 

Caspar laughs – a hearty, deep-throated laugh that starts in his gut and blossoms elsewhere, because Linhardt is still an enigma beyond his understanding. So many years with their lives intertwined and Caspar knows only one thing with certainty: Linhardt swallowed the moon and fed him the stars from the moment they set eyes on each other, binding their lives with such tightly-wound thread that not even stark differences could drive them apart. Linhardt almost convinces himself to pay Caspar no mind, but the very corners of his lips curl upwards. 

Caspar puffs his chest out, as best he can while keeping himself afloat, his expression between comical and dreadfully serious. “You don’t have to worry about either when you have me. I’ll carry you and your fishing pole down here!” 

Linhardt almost laughs. It rumbles in the pit of his stomach, fluttering to the base of his throat, but the Gar flops out of Caspar’s grasp and splashes back into the water between them before he can manage. Sprinkled by the lake’s transient rain, the two float in a momentarily stunned silence. Caspar opens his mouth to say a thousand wisecracks (“Those things are slippery,” competing with, “Maybe we offended it talking about fishing.”) but all that falls from his lips is another laugh, tickled pink with amusement. As he wipes droplets of water from his face, Linhardt joins with a chuckle of his own.

He wonders why Caspar’s laugh, above all others, is so contagious.

“I’m gonna see what else I can catch.” Bouts of sputtering laughter breaking his attempts at a straight face, Caspar draws out his first vowel like the flat notes of an untuned instrument before he finds the right key. “Be right back. Stay put.” 

Linhardt, kicking his feet across a line between the contrary and a little vivacity, states with the slightest purse of his lips, “I think I’ll have a nice swim in the meantime, actually.”

Caspar is almost a meter’s reach away by then, but his foolish grin widens anyway – if his skin could stretch beyond the contours of his face he would pin the corners of his mouth to his ears, just to smile at every instance of Linhardt’s humanity. He holds up two victorious thumbs (Linhardt doesn’t spare the energy to roll his eyes but he returns the gesture with a held up thumb of his own, barely poking out of the water) and dives under the surface again.

In the wake of a morose silence where nature’s passive sounds drift out of earshot, the waterfall’s roar no more than an indistinct mewl, Linhardt pinches his nose in two fingers and lowers his head beneath the surface. His eyes are shut tight, crinkling in the corners as the water settles around him. Though his body is accustomed to the temperature – slightly warmer than the shallows but cold enough to seep into his muscles, tightening between tendons when he least expects it – he finds that true peace can only be found on land for creatures like himself, always a bit colder on the inside than most. Like the wiregrass floating down a dilapidated marsh, his hair hovers around him in layers. 

With haste, Linhardt lets go of his nose and tightens his lips.

It wasn’t so much of a swim as it was a submersive bath, in truth. He barely maintains his balance by bending his legs at the knees, running one hand down the plastered sleeves of his uniform’s undershirt as the other works to keep him stationary. He hadn’t thought to bring a lovely fragrance or two (or, rather, he was far too encumbered on Caspar’s shoulder to care at the time) but washing his skin and clothes clean of dried sweat, wet lethargy, and everything in-between is a necessity. Masses of kaleidoscopic colors flash behind the darkness of his lids as he scrubs down his body’s creases and crevices, warping into the silhouettes of his housemates standing before him.

Linhardt recalls the skid of Ferdinand’s boots against tossed gravel when he flanked a bandit he hadn’t caught sight of, and how scarlet painted that same gravel from the sharpest point of his lance moments later. Even his own doing, an unnerved spell summoning a blade of wind to push back another rushing at Petra, had brought the same consequences: crumpled limbs, stained fabric, and a pool of blood. He didn’t mean to, is how he tries to justify it when the image comes to him again— that spell had been harmless until then, barely knocking on Sylvain’s armor in the houses’ last mock battle. It turns his stomach, forces him to scrub harder.

The Harpstring Moon brought with it a lush, even temper but the Red Canyon was immune to its merciful touch, leaving Linhardt hunched over behind a pile of debris and emptying his soul into what remained that day; it was the only time he was outwardly grateful for Caspar’s rough hands, holding back his hair and patting him a little too hard on the back. 

Against the stretched currents of the lake’s western-led path, Linhardt is none the wiser to his friend’s antics. Those same hands, smaller than his own and calloused beyond repair, reach beyond the muddled darkness and scrape against the spaces between his ribs without warning. Linhardt nearly swallows a mouthful of saltwater, tastebuds overwhelmed by a sordid dash of sodium. Surprises were never in his repertoire, nor did he want them to be; if there was no contribution to his own interests, then what was the point? He rises to the surface before his lungs shrivel and his heart jumps into his throat, pawing at the water until he could lift his head and breathe. Green tresses saturated from roots to ends, almost black, reflect the sun’s dying light.

Even so, he hasn’t escaped Caspar’s grasp.

Surfacing with a laugh that resembles more of a tittering howl, Caspar keeps his hand clasped in front of Linhardt’s stomach, one arm around his waist in a loose half-ring. He’s cautious, as if the taller boy would break under his grip – all bones and no muscle, just skin stretched over a skeleton crafted for fragile study. His hands move a smidgen and press down against Linhardt’s stomach when his inhales push in further than usual. 

“Did I scare ya?” Caspar asks with such high spirits that Linhardt almost doesn’t catch the undertone of concern. Neck craning to read the fine print, Caspar takes note of Linhardt’s frown – the same one he’s always had, small and wound tight. “You should see your face, Lin. I think this is the most emotion you’ve shown in your whole life—”

Linhardt presses the heel of his hand against his eyelids. One first, then the other, working to keep afloat despite Caspar taking on most of the work. He leans his weight back and exhales, organizing the loosened seams of his composure.

“You are absolutely tactless,” he groans but there isn’t a punch to his tone, ever monotonous. His body relaxes into Caspar’s and he decides that the Bergliez boy is more of a nuisance than he cares to admit– but one annoyance is better than multiple. “I am human, you know. Being grabbed in the murky depths of a lake startles me as it would anyone else.”

Caspar’s smile softens at the corners but it doesn’t waver, carved into the lesser swell of his cheeks and turning the tip of his nose down just a bit. He squeezes Linhardt around the waist with the scissor-grip of his arm and quips, “Oh, come on, it was just a bit of fun!” 

Of course, their definitions of what constitutes as fun are wildly contrasting. 

Linhardt stares into his eyes and beyond, venturing into the hidden corners of his very conscience, and Caspar’s blood tingles with heat – it’s a pleasant sensation, a warmth that crawls into the shells of his ears and round cheeks reminiscent of a crackling fire’s residual embers. It wasn’t the first time they were so close, where Linhardt could make out the blown out pores littered on Caspar’s nose and Caspar notes the flecks of bitten flesh on Linhardt’s lower lip. Indiscriminate touches and knowing glances are simply a part of their friendship – from the start, it was nothing out of the ordinary. 

The personification of an opposition to basic confrontation, Linhardt concedes with ease, placing the palm of his hand over Caspar’s face to push him away. There was no need for justification, let alone the chaotically glued together defenses Caspar would hold together with overarching confidence and a little too much security in his chances. Linhardt hates running but he’s an expert at it, swallowing his bothers with a shake of his shoulders; to dwell in the past is a mistake that would wrack the machinations of his mind for the lonesome hours of twilight, stealing precious hours of sleep. He would rather be buried in a mountain of pegasus feather-stuffed pillows, dreaming of a universe that’s stopped spinning in the meantime.

“Well,” he starts with a posh look about him, “You have had your fun. Your punishment is carrying me back to shore.” 

Their eyes meet again when Linhardt faces Caspar, separate shades of blue blending into one another as the sky is painted coral and violet. A spry afternoon had come and gone, laid to rest by an evening on the horizon; gold fades into a thousand hues brushed across the clearing in broad strokes, cool shadows cloaking the distant willow tree in the same outline as the rocky mountainside. Caught under the waning sun’s light, Linhardt resembles a gouache painting – done in haste without sacrificing details, flat and round bristles filling in the spaces of his subdued features, an unorthodox beauty Caspar could find himself scrutinizing for hours on end. 

(And he has, once caught red-handed wondering how one’s nose could have a slope so dainty yet harbor a slight bump and still remain attractive. Linhardt didn’t let him live it down for an hour before getting bored – quite a long time for him.) 

Linhardt slides his arms over Caspar’s shoulders in pretend ignorance, winding his heels around his thighs in a loose hold. Positioned comfortably on his back, it took no more effort on his part than most of their paired activities, and Caspar waded toward the shore without further prompt. It would have taken a mere minute had it not been for their knack to converse – not to mention Caspar’s desire to wash away the heat burrowed under his chest and cheeks, flushing him the same pink streaking across the clouds. He complains about Linhardt’s weight for the fourth time when they’re halfway across the lake, taking a moment to pause and regain his energy. 

“I am the same weight I have always been,” Linhardt retorts.

“It sure doesn’t feel like it,” Caspar huffs as he continues to swim, “You haven’t been taking up Lysithea’s offers to eat cake with her, have you?”

“No.”

“And Ferdinand’s sugar-laced tea parties? With the pastries?”

A pregnant pause. “Maybe.” Caspar starts to shriek in horror but Linhardt speaks without reproach, “But it tires me to hear him talk for so long. I often leave before he even pours the tea.”

“Why Ferdinand thinks it’s possible to chew your ear off without having you run away is beyond me. All he talks about is that hogwash about a noble’s duty, or something.” 

“Your understanding of me is rivalled by no one, Caspar, truly.”

A dissonant song on high-strung chords, Caspar chuckles when he finds his footing and hauls his friend to land. “Easy on the romance, Lin.”

Linhardt yawns. “As you wish.”

He avoids dirtying the soles of his feet when he’s placed on a patch of grass next to the sandy shoreline but Caspar rushes past him in an attempt to dry off with the speed of his movements alone, somehow continuously filled with energy. The white satin ribbon remains tied around his wrist but barely so, the loosened knot coming undone as he wrings the excess water from his hair. Linhardt catches it with his other hand as it starts to fall and holds it in his palm; he stalks toward the olden tree protecting their uniform’s dark outer layers – his jacket and pants were folded neatly, while Caspar’s vest and pants were thrown in a pile of mashed cloth – and sighs.

A week ago, he would have shown no reluctance to summon a wind spell as a means to dry their underclothes and hair. Besides his usual protests against doing something that isn’t necessary, it was second nature to him – an easy practice he was enraptured in since childhood (his mother was always ecstatic to hear of his exceptional progress, but warned too often of the repercussions for his liking) and eventually brought to the Officer’s Academy. Now as Caspar dashes around the tree for a second time, kicking up dirt and tousling the already half-dry strands of his hair, Linhardt finds it too much of a risk. 

“Stop running around,” he says when he’s pulled on one boot and works on the other, the rest of his belongings held in the crook of his elbow and secured by his free hand, “We should be dry by the time we reach the monastery.”

Caspar skids to a stop before he’s obscured by the tree trunk again, skittering toward the remaining pile of clothes just beneath its lowest hanging willows. “Say—” Both of his boots are on before Linhardt’s finished with his second one, and he reaches to tug on the cuffs to ensure laziness wouldn’t cost his friend a broken nose on the brick trail. “It’s still bothering you, isn’t it? What happened in Zanado.”

“What’s done is done. I can not change the past.” Though his words are braced with finality, Linhardt pairs them with a lukewarm shrug of his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter.” 

Caspar looks up at him and Linhardt looks back – fleeting light carves lines into his face beyond seventeen years. 

“Yeah, sure, but—”

Linhardt turns toward the lake for one more glance, eyes trained on the twinkle of the dying sun’s light reflecting on the water. “It was nice to spend time away from the academy. You have to keep your promise to carry me and my fishing pole down here next time.” 

Caspar follows his line of sight but drifts back to Linhardt’s expression as the sun hides behind the overhead cliff, its remaining fuse obscured by the waterfall. Shadows lurking under the vibrant sunset become a single entity when he rises to his feet again, covering them in a sheet of transient darkness – more grey than black, with enough residual light to make out the bare bones of each other’s features. Night would fall before they would reach the mountaintop and Edelgard, too, would have more than a few choice words to spare them about adhering to a curfew, but such thoughts are so distant Caspar doesn’t dare to reach for them. 

To press would force Linhardt to evade even further – he runs fast for someone who loathes extraneous effort and, though Caspar can wear down the soles of his boots for miles on end, catching him is more a grueling task than a difficult one. He takes a deep breath, letting it razz out of his lips on the exhale. 

“Alright,” Caspar responds when he’s made up his mind, a sincere resolve pouring into the very essence of his tone as he pats (smacks, really) Linhardt’s back, “I’ll carry you down here whenever you want. Just say the word!” 

(Even five and a half years later, when the ancient willow tree is burnt beyond repair and Linhardt laments its lost beauty every time he casts his fishing line, Caspar waves to him with startling clarity from the farthest depths of the lake.)

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first thing i've written in actual ages so a) i hope it was enjoyable and b) you didn't just finish that dazed, confused, and disoriented. kudos and comments are much appreciated, if you're willing to drop one or both!
> 
> if you like this kind of fic, or just the way i write in general, follow me on twitter dot com @recantares – i'm hooked on fire emblem right now, but i have some other fandoms i'm thinking of writing for too.


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